The actions that can be assigned are manifold as well. Users can choose to shutdown, reboot, hibernate, log off, lock / switch the user, turn on the screensaver, turn off the monitor, put the PC in sleep mode or shut down the Internet connection. That’s a lot of options to choose from already but there is more to it if you check the options of the program.

Another program can be executed before the selected action takes place. It seems that only executable files can be selected though.

Other options include emptying the recycle bin or hiding the shutdown and log off buttons in the start menu as well as the task manager. There is also another option to create shortcuts for all the actions, e.g. to shutdown the computer.

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The program is called Absolute Shutdown and lets the user set the amount of seconds Windows should wait before killing a process or service. When run for the first time it displays the current settings before Windows kills an application or service. This is usually set to a large amount and can normally be reduced without facing difficulties.

The wait time before windows would kill an application was set to 20 seconds and for hung applications to 35 seconds. I told him to reduce this setting to two seconds which should be more than enough and quit every important application before shutting down the computer. You can reduce this even further if you do not experience problems with this setting.

The settings become valid after restarting your computer. What can I say, he told me that his computer is now shutting down a lot faster than before. The software can be run from any location without installing it first. I suggest you keep it for a while to see if the new settings are not interfering with important processes or services on your computer.

If you do experience problems you should increase the shutdown timeout again to counter this. Users who do not want to use a program can change the shutdown timeouts in the Registry.

The first two settings can be found in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. They are called HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout. You should also set the key AutoEndTasks to 1 if it is not set to this value already.

The timeout settings for Services can be found in the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control and is called WaitToKillServiceTimeout. The value is entered in miliseconds which means that the value 2000 should be entered if you want to set this to 2 seconds each.

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We are going to configure the Disk Cleanup Settings in Windows to delete the temporary files and create a new rule that the software will be run during system shutdown.

Our first step would be to open the Disk Cleanup Settings and configure them the way we want. To do that you use the Run command in Windows XP / 2000 or the search in Windows Vista.

cleanmgr /sageset 1

This opens the Disk Cleanup Settings. Check the elements that you want to automatically delete. If you are unsure about an element click on it and read the description. This should give you a good understanding of it.

Open the Group Policy Editor now. You do that in the same location where you started the Disk Cleanup Settings.

gpedit.msc

Navigate to User Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts (Logon / Logoff) and double-click on Logoff.

Click on Add and Browse in the next window. Right-click in the blank space of the Logoff folder and create a new text document. Name it cleanup.cmd. Open it with a right-click and add the following line to it.

cleanmgr /sagerun 1

Select the file cleanup.cmd and click Open and in the previous menu OK. The file that you created should be now in the list. Click on Apply and OK afterwards. Et Voila, we are done.

Everything that you selected during the configuration will now be deleted after every system shutdown.

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